# Why did Mathematics and Philosophy not flourish in Ancient Rome **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 21, 2015, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411 "2015-10-21T23:34:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![thanatic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/97f17d/32.png) [@thanatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thanatic)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2015, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/1 "2015-10-21T23:34:09Z")
like it did in Ancient Greece…something i always wanted to know ---
**Author:** ![Glazer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a88e57/32.png) [@Glazer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Glazer)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2015, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/2 "2015-10-21T23:38:37Z")
Ever try to add in Roman numerals? ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2015, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/3 "2015-10-21T23:48:03Z")
Romans were too busy conquering the world and administrating the empire. The Greeks sat around the agora and argued. However, it was a mark of prestige to have a Greek tutor for the kids, so the whole philosophy bit continued without a real interruption. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/4 "2015-10-22T01:42:11Z")
Could part of it be that Greece was de-centralized into dozens of city-states, but Rome was absolutely centralized? If you have lots of city-states, you’ll have lots of viewpoints. People from Athens will have different values than people from Corinth. Rome was too emphatic about homogenizing. Like milk. Everybody the same, marching in step. Having a different viewpoint wasn’t admired. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/5 "2015-10-22T01:46:34Z")
> [@thanatic](#): > > like it did in Ancient Greece…something i always wanted to know Presumes facts not in evidence ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/6 "2015-10-22T02:05:14Z")
Romans were essentially practical and reduced everything to the Almighty As: higher mathematics didn’t pay the rent. On the other hand, they were excellent engineers — the prime secret of life is to over-engineer — and kept many tame philosophers around as pets. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/7 "2015-10-22T03:59:03Z")
> [@Glazer](#): > > Ever try to add in Roman numerals? Greek numerals are no walk in the park. > [@Claverhouse](#): > > Romans were essentially practical and reduced everything to the Almighty As: higher mathematics didn’t pay the rent. > > On the other hand, they were excellent engineers — the prime secret of life is to over-engineer — and kept many tame philosophers around as pets. Exactly. Pondering about the origin of beauty was not going to get those aqueducts built. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/8 "2015-10-22T08:53:12Z")
They certainly knew all about Greek mathematics and philosophy and continued to teach those subjects: [http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Education/rome.html](http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Education/rome.html) [http://www.crystalinks.com/romephilosophy.html](http://www.crystalinks.com/romephilosophy.html) ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/9 "2015-10-22T09:43:49Z")
> [@thanatic](#): > > like it did in Ancient Greece…something i always wanted to know Possibly because many of them went to Greece to philosiphise? But of the pure Roman ones, I’ve read Lucretius, Pliny, and Cicero. Not that I can remember what they said - it was 30 years ago, after all. ---
**Author:** ![FasterThanMeerkats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@FasterThanMeerkats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FasterThanMeerkats)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/10 "2015-10-22T15:50:06Z")
Stoics and Epicureans not philosophical enough for you? Seems like a pretty meaningful contribution. Heck, Marcus Aurelius is mentioned in every basic philosophy class (kind of as an oddity, but it still counts). ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/11 "2015-10-22T16:24:20Z")
Wasn’t knowledge of some facets of mathematics necessary for all their engineering projects? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/12 "2015-10-22T16:27:52Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > Wasn’t knowledge of some facets of mathematics necessary for all their engineering projects? Yeah, but a lot of it was done without really much in the way of representative math; some building of models, some geometry, some scaling up, but algebra hadn’t been invented. Mind you: it’s not so different from Gaudí hanging chains to model his ceilings upside-down rather than using a not-yet-invented numeric analysis program. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/13 "2015-10-22T16:32:34Z")
> [@FasterThanMeerkats](#): > > Stoics and Epicureans not philosophical enough for you? Seems like a pretty meaningful contribution. Heck, Marcus Aurelius is mentioned in every basic philosophy class (kind of as an oddity, but it still counts). As others have already mentioned, the Romans were more practical-minded than the Greeks. The philosophers you mention tend to be practical philosophers, concerned with how best to live life. It may be that it was the Greeks, not the Romans, who were the anomaly, in being interested in impractical matters, such as pure mathematics and philosophy, for their own sake. From the Wikipedia article on pure mathematics: > [@](#): > > Ancient Greek mathematicians were among the earliest to make a distinction between pure and applied mathematics. Plato helped to create the gap between “arithmetic”, now called number theory, and “logistic”, now called arithmetic. Plato regarded logistic (arithmetic) as appropriate for businessmen and men of war who “must learn the art of numbers or [they] will not know how to array [their] troops” and arithmetic (number theory) as appropriate for philosophers “because [they have] to arise out of the sea of change and lay hold of true being.” Euclid of Alexandria, when asked by one of his students of what use was the study of geometry, asked his slave to give the student threepence, “since he must make gain of what he learns.” The Greek mathematician Apollonius of Perga was asked about the usefulness of some of his theorems in Book IV of Conics to which he proudly asserted, > > They are worthy of acceptance for the sake of the demonstrations themselves, in the same way as we accept many other things in mathematics for this and for no other reason. > > And since many of his results were not applicable to the science or engineering of his day, Apollonius further argued in the preface of the fifth book of Conics that the subject is one of those that “…seem worthy of study for their own sake.” Has there been any other pre-modern society that has been anywhere near as interested in pure reason as the Greeks? ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/14 "2015-10-22T19:37:02Z")
The Roman engineers obviously knew some mathematics, but they did not create any. That was all done by the Greeks and Babylonians. I remember reading somewhere that the Romans built one aqueduct that had a slope of 6 feet per mile. That’s just over .1%. That’s amazing. But they did nothing comparable to Archimedes. Actually, until Newton came along, nobody did anything comparable to Archimedes. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/15 "2015-10-22T21:28:17Z")
The Romans were more practical than the Greeks. They really got into Engineering in a big, big way. Anything that _obviously_ contributed to that was highly valued and developed. The problem with being so practical minded is that seemingly useless knowledge oftentimes turns out to be quite useful. The Romans were also quite rigid in altering their basic culture. E.g., they valued land ownership a lot. Merchants who got rich selling grain and such were looked down upon and excluded from the higher political circles. But if you owned a thousand acres, your were Mr. Wonderful, even if you were going broke. I think the two were tied together. If they valued alternate ways of getting ahead in life, then alternate ways of making that happen would have developed more. ---
**Author:** ![Abner\_Ravenwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@Abner\_Ravenwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abner_Ravenwood)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/16 "2015-10-22T21:50:23Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Yeah, but a lot of it was done without really much in the way of representative math; some building of models, some geometry, some scaling up, but algebra hadn’t been invented. Mind you: it’s not so different from Gaudí hanging chains to model his ceilings upside-down rather than using a not-yet-invented numeric analysis program. I was just in Barcelona on vacation and the tour guide at Sagadra Familia mentioned the chains. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/17 "2015-10-22T22:10:48Z")
> [@FasterThanMeerkats](#): > > Heck, Marcus Aurelius is mentioned in every basic philosophy class (kind of as an oddity, but it still counts). Funnily enough, I recently purchased a book on him. It’s in my to-read pile. ---
**Author:** ![Abner\_Ravenwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@Abner\_Ravenwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abner_Ravenwood)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/18 "2015-10-22T22:19:51Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Funnily enough, I recently purchased a book on him. It’s in my to-read pile. I bought The Meditations in 2001 and it’s been on my ever growing to-read pile since. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/19 "2015-10-22T22:33:07Z")
The Romans did not produce mathematicians. in fact, all of the mathematicians of classical antiquity were Greek…like Pappas of Alexandria…who was also the last. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411/20 "2015-10-22T23:26:00Z")
> [@Abner\_Ravenwood](#): > > I bought The Meditations in 2001 and it’s been on my ever growing to-read pile since. Downloaded a free Kindle copy a couple of weeks ago to read on a plane flight. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-mathematics-and-philosophy-not-flourish-in-ancient-rome/735411.md?page=2)